Roy Plomley

World War II This part of his career came to an abrupt end when commercial broadcasting from the continent was brought to a halt by World War II. Plomley and his new wife, Diana Wong, whom he married earlier that year, stayed on in Paris, only narrowly escaping back to the UK via a circuitous route through the chaos and panic of the Fall of France, losing all their possessions in the process, as German occupying forces approached the French capital in June 1940.

Desert Island Discs In November 1941, Plomley devised the BBC Radio series Desert Island Discs. The idea spontaneously came to him one evening while at home, and he wrote to Leslie Perowne, who was in charge of popular record programmes. He had a favourable reply and so he set out his ideas with the names of personalities to be invited to participate. In those days of WWII every BBC Radio show was scripted by Plomley and submitted for censorship.

On 29 January 1942, the first of a series of eight weekly programmes was broadcast.

Other work

Plomley's broadcasting career was not restricted to Desert Island Discs; he also compiled and presented several feature programmes and was the chairman of BBC Radio's game show Many a Slip from 1964 to 1979, and a participant in such panel games as Does the Team Think?, also on BBC Radio. He anchored Round Britain Quiz in 1961. For television he produced Dinner Date with Death in 1949, claimed to be the first UK film made for TV, and in the same year chaired We Beg to Differ on BBC Radio, transferring with it to BBC Television in 1951. He also wrote the screenplay for the 1953 film The Blakes Slept Here.

Plomley was appointed OBE in 1975. He was posthumously inducted into the Radio Academy's Hall of Fame.

After a period of declining health, Plomley died from a heart attack at his home in Putney on 28 May 1985, at the age of 71; he was buried at Putney Vale Cemetery.